Arrant Nonsense

Finish the first draft of the tattoo story. I'm at the climax right now.

See if I can re-work Hell's Process Server so the spec element is obvious from the first page.

Update my RP activity logs.

Tag this character.

Broken down like that, it doesn't seem like much. I can totally do it!

1. Print out Angry Bitter Angel, in a different font, read it over, and red-pen it. This should be my final pass, or at least I hope so. Then I can start shipping it out too. Printing it was an exercise in frustration because my printer randomly decided to be a butthead, but I have it, finally. All 34 pages. Standard Manuscript Format will probably triple that. God.

1a. Fix the stuff I red-pen.

2. Get at least 2000 words into Glam Ben. I started it last night and have nearly 300 over 700 words right now. The deadline on that one is the 15th of March, so... yeah. Need to get on that. Writing sprints are a go-go-go today, and Write or Die, I think, will be my very good friend.

3. I owe my RP partner two tags. She understands that the "writing I might be paid for" takes priority, but I don't think I tagged anything at all yesterday. This needs to be rectified because I luff her.

4. If I decide that Angry Bitter Angel is done, format it and send it off to its first market. Research other markets for it as well. Long story is long and subject matter is iffy and markets are thin. Possibly throw five bucks at Duotrope's and see what's there. There's also Ralan's and the Submission Grinder, so.

5. Try to throw off this damn cold.

6. Clean out the Pile o'Doom beside my sofa. Take the blue rolly bag downstairs. Seeing as there are books that need to go downstairs in the Pile o'Doom, I can multitask that.

And to top off my day yesterday, I had two rejections. Looking over my spreadsheet, I realized that one of them has not yet been sent to F&SF, so I'll gin up a sub package for them and ship that off on payday, since there's a PO not far from the bank.

I entered the cow story in the Fantasy Faction Writing Contest. Deadline is tomorrow, folks, so if you've got 'em, send 'em. And now I have the fun of deciding where the other things that got rejected this month are going. I've been bad about flipping things lately. The quality of rejections I'm getting are better (editors are, at least, reading my stories clear to the end now), but they're still rejections and it's getting... wearing. Not to mention that one place has had one of my stories for over a year (and two queries have gone unanswered), and three of them have been out since friggin' December. One of those is a flash piece. Come on.

This is why RP is so damn seductive. Instant, positive feedback. And it loops in a very insidious way. And my brain has been complete mush since I finished Won His Soul; it's like I poured everything into it and now there's nothing left.

Hubby and Boy are gone on an overnight boy scout thing. I'm hoping to get some actual writing done today. I'm really not sure I will.

Gyah, yes, I realize I promised pictures. And I will post them. Eventually. I swear. Today has been full of busy-ness, however. I scribbled 1200 words and am now sitting at 13,800, in the Won His Soul story. I outlined the coming events in a somewhat coherent manner as well, so I know how I'm getting to the end from here. I discussed a collaboration with my lovely and effulgent RP Partner for an Actual Fiction Story for submission to Writers of the Future and Other Venues. I gave Ben rabies, which is, for the record, a horrible way to die. You may consider that a warning.

I also went to the bank, and I now have enough money saved up for WorldCon to stay in the hotel and eat. All other money I save will be walking-around cashola. This weekend is CONduit, where the writer Guest of Honor is Tamora Pierce. In a fit of efficiency, I actually bought and read one of her books before meeting her, so I won't be a blithering idiot. The book was "Terrier," and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

So this post isn't a total loss for y'all, I leave you with a photo I shot five minutes from my house, of a Scottish Highland cow and calf:

( HOW CUTE ARE THESE ANIMALS. 1024x768. )

So, wow, the RP that ate my brain has also, apparently, eaten my LJ. Has it really been since the 3rd that I updated this thing?

The reason for that, I think, is that, well... nothing actually interesting's happening. My life is on an even keel, the rejections are coming thick and fast, and the writing is...

Honestly? Pretty much completely stalled, right now.

But that's okay. Because I have a shiny new toy I'm playing with, and it really is the Most Fun Ever. But the thing is, no one really wants to read RP logs except people who are invested in either the characters or the people playing them, and I'm pretty sure you good folks got bored with watching poor Ben get his buttons pushed a long time ago. So while I go back and read these interactions with unseemly glee, none of you (probably) are all that interested--especially when an adventure goes on for so long that it squishes the post all the way over to the side of the page and LJ collapses it on itself. Which is when I hit the "thread" button to bring up a shiny new page, but...yeah. Seven times, bit much. EVEN WHEN IT'S AWESOME.

ANYWAY. All of which is to say that... I haven't died. I haven't checked my flist in...awhile, either, because, like I say, much with the brain-eating.

If you really want to stalk Ben (and his honest-to-capital-G-God Guardian Angel, who rocks like a big rocking thing OMG), drop me a line and I'll tell you who he is over at sixwordstories. And that right there is an awesome, awesome comm. It's like the ultimate multifandom crossover crackfic. You can find yourself anywhere, doing anything, for reals. I mean, like I say: Guardian Angel -- and one I'm pretty sure the Christians on my flist would have no problem with (I sure don't). The people who play the Divine over there are an amazing bunch and they alternately have me laughing my ass off and bawling all over my keyboard.

So. That's the State of the agilebrit right now.

This is wild. Or maybe it's just me, being overly-invested. Hell if I know.

But you know that feeling you get in your chest when you're tremendously relieved by something? Like something was stopping you from taking a full breath and suddenly you can again?

I posted a thing yesterday, as Ben, wherein he basically wakes up, hogtied (I have no idea what the etiquette is on linking stuff like this, so I will refrain for now; it's not hard to find, really, if your LJ-fu is strong). And then I waited to see what would happen. Now, Ben's made friends with an honest-to-capital-G-God angel over there (which I may have mentioned). In fact, he went looking for trouble (and found it, clearly), because he was pissed on this guy's behalf and there was nothing he could actually do. In fact, Ben wasn't the only one pissed on his behalf. I was too.

So. Am I, personally, supposed to have an actual physical reaction of relief when this guy shows up to untie him? Because I did. Funny thing, someone else showed up too, in another thread, but it wasn't the same. And she showed up first.

I...just.

And the thing is, it's all improv. There's no collusion here, no actual collaboration; just a couple of people riffing from each other as fictional characters. I have no idea who the person is who's playing the angel dude, and they probably have no idea who I am (unless they've gone poking through my userpics where I credited myself as the icon maker, then came over here and put two and two together). It's ... just ...

What is this I don't even.

Or are LJ comment notifications coming in abominably slowly?

I mean, okay, yay for tabs that I can keep open and continually refresh, but this is cramping my style. And werewolf_hacker's.

But I gotta say that roleplaying Ben last night was just about the most fun I've had in quite some time. Maybe I should be headdesking x1000 (especially over the fact that I created an RP journal for Janni on the fly), but I'm too busy giggling madly to myself.

And, okay, I'm brand, brand new to all this RP stuff, but the fact that all this happened completely spontaneously with a total stranger just hits my "that's so cool" button.

BECAUSE THAT WAS SO COOL.